Aspects of the monastic patronage of the English and French royal houses 1130-1270
Before the eleventh century Church reforms, kings and nobles had regarded churches and monasteries as private property, built by them on their own lands and over which they retained substantial rights.
The Borgias – Review – SE02 EP10 – The Confession
‘With my last strength I damn this unholy Pope!’ ~ Savonarola
First Catch Your Toad: Medieval Attitudes to Ordeal and Battle
Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, had walked over hot iron ploughshares to disprove an allegation of intimacy with Alwyn Bishop of Winchester, while Curthose, the Conqueror’s son, is reputed to have undergone the ordeal to prove his paternity.
Medieval Welsh manuscript to go for sale at auction
A 14th century manuscript containing the Laws of Hywel Dda is set to go up for auction next month, and is expected to sell for between £500,000-700,000
Medieval Warfare Magazine
Medieval Warfare Magazine is a new publication for those interested in the military history of the Middle Ages.
A View of the Legal Profession from a mid-twelfth-century monastery
This essay looks back quite a few years-certainly to before the time the living can remember-to the mid-twelfth century, an era that some have marked as the dawn of the modern legal profession in Western European culture.
Hexham Abbey receives £1.8m to restore medieval buildings
Hexham Abbey in northeast England has been granted £1.8m from the Heritage Lottery Fund for a restoration of the Abbey’s medieval monastery buildings.
Sacred rules, secular revelations:the conceptions of rights in pre-modern Europe
Before examining what this ‘something else’ is, it is necessary to pause a moment to consider the very idea of ‘medieval human rights’. To many the phrase may appear to be an oxymoron. Certainly, the popular image of the Middle Ages is as the ‘Dark Ages’ and, more broadly, with religious and preternatural superstition and ignorance.
The Printing Press: As An Agent of Social Change
Europe was ready to receive the printing press as the 12th and 13th centuries had been a period of radical change in the way new inventions and innovations changed the traditional ways of managing of production, and economic growth.
‘Guelphs! Faction, Liberty and Sovereignty: Inquiries about the Quattrocento’
Such an approach has not always been the obvious one, as the centuries- long debate about the nature of the Italian noble (or magnate) and Popolo fac- tions suggests. Gaetano Salvemini’s 1899 interpretation of Florentine political conflict in the thirteenth century as the clash between two groups with distinct socio-economic characters and political programmes was probably as much indebted to Machiavelli as to the author’s socialist beliefs
Constructions of Gender in Medieval Welsh Literature
The discussion of gender in medieval literary criticism is generally considered
to be a relatively new field, having achieved real momentum only in the latter half of the twentieth century. However, since it was the early fifteenth century when Christine de Pisan wrote a response to Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose, it cannot really be imagined that the medieval audience was too primitive to be fully aware of the subtext inside their stories.
Love, Mercy, and Courtly Discourse: Marguerite de Navarre Reads Alain Chartier
Love, Mercy, and Courtly Discourse: Marguerite de Navarre Reads Alain Chartier Frelick, Nancy (University of British Columbia) Mythes à la cour, mythes pour la four (2010).…
The daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine: a comparative study of twelfth-century royal women
This thesis is the first study of the daughters of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine which considers them in a dynastic context.
The Heavenly Jerusalem: from Architectural Canopies to Urban Landscape in the Southern Portals of Chartres Cathedral
It is the purpose of this article to study the urban forms sculpted on the southern portals of Chartres cathedral as representations of the Heavenly Jerusalem and to follow their development from the canopies over the jamb statues to the architectural frames of the small reliefs of the porch.
Creativity, the trickster, and the cunning harper king: A study of the minstrel disguise entrance trick in “King Horn” and “Sir Orfeo”
What does a hero do when he finds himself in an impossible situation where customary tactics are useless; magic is not in the cards, and divine intervention unlikely? He could give up. Or he could use cunning. In both King Horn and Sir Orfeo, the hero wiggles out of just such a squeeze by using a minstrel disguise entrance trick—a sort of musical Trojan horse for which the enemy’s closely guarded gates swing open in welcome.
The Seeds of Narcosis in Medieval Medicine
This paper concerns the recovery, analysis and interpretation of seed caches from the Soutra medieval hospital, situated 17 miles south-east of Edinburgh.
Seeing through the ‘Priest’s Eye’: Teaching Medieval Codicology and Book History through William of Pagula’s Oculus sacerdotis
Written entirely in Latin and never before edited or fully translated into English, the manuscript’s textual contents remain inaccessible to most students; and even if they are fluent in medieval Latin, they would still have to contend with the manuscript’s paleographical idiosyncrasies, the absence of modern punctuation, and the complex system of lexical abbreviations used by the scribes who penned the text.
Where to Live the Philosophical Life in the Sixth Century? Damascius, Simplicius, and the Return from Persia
When establishing an endpoint for the classical philosophical tradition in the Greco-Roman world, scholars often choose the closing of the Athenian Neoplatonic school by the emperor Justinian in 529.
Captives or prisoners: society and obligation in medieval Iberia
In medieval Iberia, particularly from the twelfth century onward, warfare took on some religious overtones. As a consequence, the prisoners of war that appear in the sources were for the most part defined by their religious status, as either Muslims or Christians.
Near-Death Folklore in Medieval China and Japan : A Comparative Analysis
Medieval Chinese and Japanese literature provides numerous examples of near-death experiences, episodes in which the narrator claims to have gained personal images of the after life.
A Quiet Revolution – The Horse in Agriculture, 1100-1500
The partnership of man and horse on the land goes back a long time, but, as John Langdon shows, it was not until after the Conquest that the horse really began to come into its own.
The Cluniac Priories of Galicia and Portugal: Their Acquisition and Administration 1075-ca.1230
It goes without saying that two topics are central to progress on all the rest, and it is to these that the present paper will address itself. First, the problem of acquisition…Secondly, the problem of administration…
Natural Philosophy and Theology in the Late Middle Ages: A Surprising Relationship?
A significant problem in the early years of Christianity was what attitude to adopt toward traditional pagan learning. Should they shun it as potentially dangerous to the faith? Should they wholeheartedly embrace it as offering important knowledge and insights about the world? Or would it be more advantageous to adopt an intermediate position?